Grooved Ware in Orkney

Abstract

• While the pottery from 'cooking holes' at Lion Point, Clackton, in Essex was the first assemblage to be named as 'Grooved ware' by Stuart Piggot in his influential 1936 publication that launched the idea of a type of pottery (Piggott 1936, 191), it is actually at the other end of the British landmass, in Orkney, where the story of this ceramic tradition begins.